A Different Kind of Immortality
by Legendary Legacy
Summary: Not all forms of Immortality are created equal. Unfortunately for Keitaro, he's ended up with one of the more...frustrating kinds.
1. Chapter 1

**I wrote this story for a Halloween challenge, which would explain why I'm releasing it in February. Try not to take it too seriously, because I certainly didn't.**

* * *

A Different Kind of Immortality

A Love Hina fic

By Legendary Legacy

Standard Disclaimer: Love Hina and its characters belong to Ken Akamatsu and those that he gave the rights to. The plot is, to the best of my knowledge, my own.

Enjoy. Or don't. Whichever.

* * *

Keitaro stared up at the enormous Hinata Inn looming above him. He looked very much like a man at the end of a long and arduous journey.

"Hinata Sou," he muttered; a touch of nostalgia in his voice. "I can't believe it's taken me so long to come back." As he began ascending the much-to-long stairway, his thoughts returned to the last time he'd come here some number of years ago, and one of the reasons why he was currently back now. "On the bright side, grandma is sure to have found a way to fix me after all this time."

Reaching the top of the stairs, he walked to the door and slowly pushed it open. Sticking his head inside, he glanced around, finding no one in sight.

"Hello?" he called. "Grandma? Aunt Haruka? Anyone?"

Receiving no answer, he slipped into the building, setting his suitcase a few feet from the door. He briefly wondered if he should just wait at the doorway until someone came by and saw him; the place was large enough that he wouldn't rule it out as being empty just because no one had heard him calling.

In the end, he decided against that, choosing instead to go searching for someone himself. With luck, he'd find Grandma Hina or Aunt Haruka first and, if not, he'd just explain who he was to whomever he did meet. It wasn't like he was breaking and entering or anything: This place had been like a second home to him when he was younger. Maybe he'd check out his old room while he was at it. And knowing the eccentricities of his grandma, there was no telling what sort of changes she'd made to the rest of the place over the years.

He hadn't gone very far when he came upon a large and luxurious-looking outdoor hot spring. "This wasn't here the last time, was it?" he wondered curiously. Maybe he'd test it out? He glanced down both ends of the hallway. Still seeing no one around, he decided to go for it. Grandma would want him to make himself at home anyway, he surmised.

Ten minutes later found Keitaro enjoying a little slice of heaven. The hot waters felt absolutely wonderful on his tired body, as though it were soaking right down to his bones and soothing away all the built up stress and discomfort he hadn't even realized he'd accumulated for who knew how long.

But he was going to have to get out and continue his search. Besides, he wouldn't want someone to walk in on him by accident. Grandma Hina and Aunt Haruka wouldn't mind, but if anyone else that happened to be staying here...well, that would probably be awkward. So, grabbing his towel and tying it around his waist, he made his way back inside.

But as he reached for the door, it decided to slide open without his help. It came as such a shock to him that he was unable to stop his still extending hand before it came to rest on the next closest thing.

Keitaro and the newcomer, a girl, as fate would so tragically have it, stared at each other for several seconds in a horrible, unbroken silence.

Now maybe, just maybe Keitaro would have been able to convince the graciously endowed girl in front of him that this had been just a horrible accident. The chances were definitely slim, but not completely out of the question that the girl might let him off easy for the mishap. Unfortunately, even if she'd allowed him the chance, he simply wouldn't have been able to come up with a proper excuse for why his hand would betray him, and choose that exact moment to give another experimental squeeze before he could pull it away.

The girl's face twitched.

Somehow, he didn't think he'd be lucky enough to escape this situation in any way as preferable as 'awkward'.

* * *

Narusagawa Naru had frozen in place, all bodily functions slowing to a crawl as her mind tried its damnedest to assess the situation properly.

She had come downstairs to take a bath, expecting her best friend Kitsune to meet her there. She'd undressed, opened the door to the spring, and immediately found herself face to face with someone. Before she'd had time to cry out in surprise, she'd felt a hand on her breast.

Now, for a very brief moment, Naru had chalked the incident up to a gag by Kitsune. She'd already removed her glasses, thereby severely diminishing her eyesight, and God knew that the two were always doing things like this in the bath; teasing and fondling at one another in an attempt to embarrass each other (Kitsune, being the far less modest of the two, always seemed to win these games).

However, thanks to those same teasing games, Naru now had a knowledge of her best friend's chest that was about as intimate as could be without actually having been...intimate...with them.

And she also wasn't so blind that she couldn't see exactly how flat the person standing before her was, which Kitsune most certainly was not.

To make matters worse, a quick look down brought her to the undeniable conclusion that this person was also a guy; Or a magician practicing a peculiar levitating towel trick for her amusement.

It didn't really need to be mentioned just how not amused she was.

And then he squeezed her breast again, and she became...even less amused. He apparently realized this as he finally pulled his hand away; clutching it to his own chest as though it had been scalded.

"...Um-" was about as far as he got before she closed her eyes, reared back, and dealt him her mightiest of haymakers, guaranteed to expel him from the Hinata grounds completely, or embed him deep enough into the far-end wall as to give the others enough time to call the police, depending on wind currents and whether she hooked her shot properly or not.

Or so she had intended, anyway. Instead, she heard a rather disturbing 'pop', followed by something rebounding off of said wall and splashing into the water, while something larger hit the ground next to her.

She opened her eyes, and instantly went into another reboot.

Stepping back and shutting the sliding door again quickly, she used a shaky hand to reposition her glasses upon her deathly ashen face. She took a minute to convince herself that she hadn't actually seen what she thought she'd saw, took a deep, calming breath, and slowly slid the door back open.

...Nope, the body of her mysterious intruder slash molester was still lying there. Headless. And spasming ever so slightly.

She looked up. Oh, and there was the head, bobbing around lazily in the hot spring like some kind of nightmarish bath toy.

...She shut the door again, and took another breath, much deeper than the last one and not a fraction as calming.

Then she let it out. Loudly.

* * *

The shriek could easily be heard throughout the building. Its intensity caused Shinobu to drop the basket of laundry she'd been carrying and give a startled cry of her own. It caused Kitsune to fall off her bed, spilling sake everywhere in the process. It caused Su to choke on a half-eaten banana. It caused Motoko, who was in the middle of a kata, to lose her grip on her blade, sending it sailing out of her hands and spinning across the room where it buried itself deep into her wall. And it caused Haruka, who was not even in the house, but down at her teashop, to glance up from her paper and check the time on her watch.

"Keitaro must be early," she mumbled as she snuffed out her cigarette and began walking leisurely back up to the dorm.

As the screams stopped reverberating through the house, Kitsune, Motoko and Shinobu quickly converged in the living room, where they were met mere moments later by a stark naked and stark-raving hysterical Naru.

"Naru, what! What's wrong!" Kitsune demanded as her best friend collapsed against her. Shinobu, having no idea what else to do, grabbed a blanket off the couch and draped it over Naru's shoulders. Whatever the situation might be, the older girl probably shouldn't be naked during it.

"B-bathroom...wasn't...d-didn't mean...but...head...oh God oh god oh god-"

"Naru, calm down!" she had to shout over the younger girl's rambling sobs. "Just...take a deep breath."

Naru did so.

"Good. Now, tell us what happened."

Looking about as composed as one could possibly expect, given her situation, she opened her mouth to speak.

"Err, excuse me?"

Only to have it clamp down so hard she was surprised that none of her teeth chipped. She very slowly turned her head to face where everyone else was already looking. At the entrance of the same hallway she'd just run down, stood the man from the bathroom; dripping wet, clothes thrown on in noticeable haste, head back on his shoulders...

"Who are you?" Kitsune demanded of the stranger, who held his hands up in a placating manner.

"I swear I can explain this if you'll all just hear me-"

Naru picked that moment to faint, slipping right through her distracted friend's arms and hitting the floor.

"...out," the boy finished weakly, as though he had fully expected such a reaction from her.

But while Shinobu looked properly torn between terrified and completely lost and Kitsune was busy tending to Naru, Motoko's eyes narrowed to slits and her grip on her sword tightened, feeling that she'd already heard enough.

The bath, an unknown male who had obviously been naked up to a few moments ago, a distraught maiden...

No, Motoko didn't need any further explanations. So, without a word, she raised her sword, catching the man's attention in the process.

"Wait! Please don't-!" he begged right before a streak of ki energy flew toward him. He had no time to move and barely enough time to squeeze his eyes shut in anticipation of the blow before the wave passed right through his upper body and slammed fiercely into the wall behind him. Blinking in surprise, he turned his head to look at the damage done behind him, then looked down at himself, wondering what had happened.

As surprised as he was, it didn't come close to Motoko's shock. How could this be? The only technique the Gods-Cry School had that could harmlessly pass through anyone was the Cutting Evil Slash; a technique she hadn't even learned yet! This male should be unconscious right now! So how was it possible that he would remain completely unhar-?

The male's arms fell off.

…Completely unarmed.

If she weren't so horrified she'd have reprimanded herself for even thinking up such an awful pun.

The left arm had been cleanly severed just below the shoulder, the other right above the elbow. For such grievous wounds, there was an unusual lack of blood, not that anyone really noticed or cared at the moment.

The man was oddly calm, considering how disfigured he'd just become. Instead of panicking, screaming, going catatonic, or dying like any normal person probably would in his place, he just sort of deflated with a look of tired resignation on his face.

"Ah," he muttered right before his head and chest slid away from the lower half of his body, hitting the ground with an audible thump. The lower half of his body remained standing in place for three seconds longer before the legs gave out, dropping down next to the rest of his parts.

With a strangled moan, Shinobu's eyes rolled back and she collapsed as well.

Motoko's sword fell from limp hands. That...that was not supposed to happen.

"You killed him!" Kitsune pointed out rather unnecessarily.

"I...but I...I wasn't even...it shouldn't-" the kendoist stammered. Kitsune spoke again, but Motoko wasn't really listening anymore. This was bad. So very, very bad. It hadn't been her intention to kill him; just inflict as many non-life threatening injuries as she could before turning him over to the proper authorities. The Aoyama clan had a strict code about preserving human life, except in very specific cases. And whether this attempted-rapist male had deserved it or not (and since she didn't doubt that he WAS an attempted-rapist, then he certainly did deserve it as far as she was concerned), she was also certain that he wouldn't fall into one of those specific cases.

And now? Not only had she murdered a stranger and traumatized her housemates (especially little Shinobu) in the process, but what would happen when her SISTER found out about it? Such dishonorable and sloppy actions reflecting on their family's good name, Tsuruko would probably…well, she wouldn't kill her, obviously, because that wasn't one of the specific cases, either. But Motoko would lay a thousand to one odds that death would be the preferable option to what Tsuruko would have in mind for her.

"Okay, okay…let's just stay calm," Kitsune said, though she looked and sounded anything but. Motoko realized she must have been ranting throughout her own mental doomsday. "We should just…find Haruka, call the police-"

Motoko shivered. Easy for her to say; she hadn't been the one who'd just cleaved someone in half. And it wasn't like the police were likely to know anything at all about ki-based sword techniques. How do you explain to someone with no prior knowledge that the large, destructive energy wave you flung from your sword was only supposed to incapacitate the victim, not dismember him?

Kitsune was still talking. "And we should move Naru and Shinobu before they wake up and see-"

"Excuse me?"

Both girls froze in their panicking and turned back in disbelief to the dead half-body, who was doing a very unconvincing job of being dead by propping itself onto its stubbed shoulder while the other partial arm made small gestures toward its severed remains.

"Um, before you do anything else...could one of you maybe help me reattach one of my arms?" he asked in a mixture of hope and sheepishness. "I uh...I can probably do the rest myself, but...well, without any hands it's sort of-"

Both girls finally lost the last of their resolve and joined Naru and Shinobu in unconsciousness.

"...difficult," he finished weakly. While not unexpected after so many years, it never stopped being a pain. He slowly began rocking back and forth; shifting himself the best he could toward his severed limbs.

He'd nearly managed to position his right arm into proper alignment when he realized he was being watched. Looking up, he saw just how closely watched he actually was. Kneeling down on her haunches directly above him was a well-tanned, foreign-looking blonde girl in a middle-school uniform. With her elbows propped on her knees and her chin resting in her hands, she appeared to be studying him rather intently.

The intense scrutiny started making him nervous. "Um…please don't scream or pass out or anything like that," he begged.

"Okay," the girl answered with a small shrug.

He blinked. Most people, especially young girls, weren't quite this understanding when they saw him like this. "Oh, well…good then."

"I'm surprised you can still speak coherently. Most zombies that I've seen never manage more than grunts and single-syllable sentences." She reached out and poked his face a few times. "'Course, you don't look as rotten as most zombies do, either. So maybe you just died and reanimated recently enough that you haven't started deteriorating yet."

Keitaro sweatdropped. "I'm not a zombie."

"Uh-huh," she muttered, unconvinced as she tilted his waist and legs around to examine the insides of his torso. "Well, your insides aren't green or filled with circuitry, so it's safe to say you're not an alien or an android. So what else could you possibly be but a zombie? ...And how do you keep all your organs from spilling out? Glue 'em all into place or something?"

Keitaro had never had very much long-term interaction with any girl, usually only about as long as the first time he found himself in a similar situation as this one around them. And he found himself in a situation similar to this one on an almost daily basis.

Yet he was still pretty sure that this particular girl was one of the stranger ones that he would ever come across. "N-no, they just...they just do that. It's really complicated. Look, could you maybe help put me back together? I'd really like to be in one piece before the others wake up and start screaming again."

The girl tilted her head to the side, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling in thought. "Weeeell...I suppose I could, but how do I know you won't try to eat my friend's brains afterward?"

"I don't eat brains!"

"Oh, so you're strictly a flesh-eating type of zombie then?"

"I'm _**not**_ a zombie!"

"Okay, okay, I'll humor you. But just so you know, I have stakes and silver bullets in my room, so you'd better not get any ideas, 'kay?"

"Those things don't kill…oh, never mind. I'll be good, I swear, just please help me!"

Feeling satisfied, she picked up his left arm.

"Just press the two ends together," he instructed, holding the remains of his arm out toward her.

She did as she was told, pressing the two severed ends together and holding them there. Almost immediately, the tissues began mending right before their eyes. In a matter of seconds, the arm was whole again, without so much as a scar to indicate that it hadn't been so all along.

"Cooool," the girl breathed in awe as Keitaro waved and shook his arm gingerly.

"Thanks, I guess."

"I can't wait to get you in my room and figure out how you do that!"

"…T-thanks, I…guess."

As the two continued their work of reassembling him, the others slowly began to come around.

"Oh wow," Kitsune mumbled, rubbing her head as she sat up. "I almost never have dreams like that. Maybe I didn't drink enough before going to bed…"

_Did Kitsune talk me into getting drunk or something?_ Naru wondered, mimicking her friend's actions. _…Am I still naked?_

Various other mutterings were made as the four girls helped each other to their feet, trying to recall exactly what had brought them all to this position in the first place.

"All done!" they heard Su shout happily. Together, they all turned in her direction.

"What the-? Aw geez, you put my legs on backward!"

And they all promptly fainted together again. And it was at this point that Haruka happened to walk through the door. Her eyes swept the room once, taking the situation in fully before settling on her ass-backward nephew.

"I have to say, this isn't nearly as bad as I was expecting," she told him, to which he could only grin weakly.

* * *

**This was only intended to be a one-shot for a challenge, so I didn't really plot or write anything out beyond this point. I know it feels unfinished, and if I could think up a plausible excuse for Keitaro's new problem without turning the thing into a crossover, I might go with it.**

**For now, at least, consider it a case similar to my other fic, "In an Unsightly Manner", a one-shot with the possibility of future continuation. Or, if the idea somehow intrigues you enough, consider this a prompt and make up your own story out of it. Your choice, really.**

**In any case, have a lovely day.**

**LL**


	2. Chapter 2

So, I thought I'd write a bit more of this story, at least enough to explain away Keitaro's new form of unkillable-ness (Hint: It's not a crossover/fusion with anything). Enjoy, if you want.

xxx

xxx

Once everyone was conscious, dressed (in Naru's case), and straightened out and whole again (in Keitaro's case), Haruka steered them all toward the seating area of the living room. Keitaro was seated on the couch with Haruka standing behind him and Su sitting next to him, while everyone else was scattered around him, taking care to not get any closer than they felt they had to, as though he were diseased with something highly contagious.

"Now then," Haruka began. "Sorry I wasn't here for the introductions. I honestly wasn't expecting you so soon."

Keitaro rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "Sorry, Aunt Haruka."

"Do NOT. Call me that," she snarled, her hand already raised to smack him over the head before reluctantly changing her mind, lest she put too much effort into it and have to waste time reviving everyone again.

Realizing he wasn't going to be hit, Keitaro relaxed. "Sorry, Aun- err...Haruka. It's just that I got really excited when you said that Grandma had important news for me, so I got up early and caught the very first train here. I guess I should have called first. Where is Grandma, anyway?"

"Not here. And I'm sorry to say that the important news she had for you probably isn't the one you're hoping for."

His face fell. "Then what…?"

A clearing of the throat by Kitsune brought their attention back to the group. "Uh, sorry to interrupt, but...did he just call you 'Aunt'?"

Haruka fished out a new cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. "Right, right." She placed a hand on Keitaro's shoulder. "Girls, I'd like you to meet Urashima Keitaro. My cousin," she said with a firm glare at Keitaro on the last word, who gulped and nodded his head quickly.

That got quite the reaction, beginning with a collective gasp of shock and disbelief.

"Wait a minute, Haruka!" Naru shouted, shooting up from her seat, gesticulating wildly toward Keitaro. "Are you seriously telling us that you're related to this…this…?"

"Zombie," Su supplied helpfully.

"I'm not a zombie!" Keitaro moaned in exasperation.

Naru continued. "This…freak of nature?"

Keitaro grimaced. "You know what? 'Zombie' is fine."

"Yes Naru, my cousin," Haruka repeated, completely unfazed. "Our mothers were sisters."

The girls were still staring at her, expecting her words to be some big joke. But at the perfectly serious look on her face, a few of them relented.

"Okay, he's your cousin then," Kitsune conceded. "That just makes me even more confused about how he could do..." She grew a little queasy at the fresh memory. "Well, you know."

Haruka sighed. "In order to understand that, you're going to have to understand a few things about the Urashima family as a whole, first."

Motoko unconsciously tightened her grip on her sword. "What sort of relevance would that have on this situation?"

"Oh God, there's not more people like him, are there?" Naru asked, looking thoroughly horrified by the thought.

"Wait, are you like him, Haruka?" Kitsune demanded warily.

"Would you all just calm down already!" Haruka commanded, quickly beginning to lose her patience. "Keitaro is completely harmless. For God's sake, Shinobu is probably more dangerous than he is."

Shinobu, who had been doing her best to seem invisible throughout the goings on, shared an uncertain look with Keitaro; neither one really sure who should feel more insulted by the older woman's statement.

Fortunately, it also seemed to calm the others down, though the tension was still there, as Motoko and Naru's white knuckles could attest to.

"Now, to answer your question Naru," Haruka continued once she was satisfied she'd regained everyone's full attention. "No, Keitaro's condition is a one-of-a-kind thing. It was an accident brought on by, and I'm going to insist that none of you ever repeat this to anyone, faulty magic."

"...Magic," Kitsune deadpanned after taking a moment to wonder whether or not she'd really heard that. The repeated shocks she'd undergone in the last fifteen minutes had all but removed the buzz she'd worked up, but still...

Naru and Shinobu looked just as disbelieving. Su's already existing interest in Keitaro increased at the thought of having not just an undead, but a magical undead in their midst.

Motoko once again reached for her blade, eyes narrowing. "What sort of magic?"

"Motoko! You can't possibly be buying this!" Naru demanded.

Haruka quirked an eyebrow in the brunette's direction. "You just saw it with your own eyes, didn't you, Naru?"

"Well yeah, I mean I know what I saw. But come on: magic? Everyone knows that magic doesn't really exist!"

"Magic does exist, Narusegawa," Motoko insisted, not looking away from the two Urashimas. "Though there are very few people left in this day and age who realize that."

Su nodded. "Yeah, like Liwu Muka. He was the official shaman back home and he knew lots of magic." Gaining a thoughtful look, she turned to Keitaro. "Can you do a rain dance?"

Keitaro shook his head.

"Darn, neither could Liwu. Every time he tried it we'd end up getting hit with tsunamis instead. He kept saying he always juked when he should have jived and unga'ed when he should have bunga'ed."

Kitsune put her head in her hands. This was starting to get weird. Not that a guy who could survive being dissected and put himself back together again wasn't weird, but people arguing about the existence of magic wasn't going to help matters any. Not really knowing what else to do at the moment, she placed a comforting hand on Shinobu's shoulder, who was still looking just as lost and disoriented as she had when this whole thing started.

Keitaro, meanwhile, managed to shrug off Su's odd comments and turned to cautiously address Motoko. "Um...what exactly do you know about magic?"

Motoko leveled another fierce glare at him, causing him to flinch back. "I am the heir to the God's Cry School of kendo, a school that my ancestors founded centuries ago for the purpose of slaying demons, evil spirits, and practitioners of the dark arts. And while I admit to not having seen much in the ways of magic myself, I do know enough about it to realize that the art of reanimating oneself after being cut in half can't be anything other than the work of some demonic ritual!" She unsheathed her sword, raising it until the tip rested inches from his throat. "What wickedness are you involved in? Necromancy? Have you bound your soul to a devil? Confess to your sins and your end will come swiftly!"

Taking great care not to gulp for fear that the slight movement would cause the blade to pierce his throat, Keitaro swept his eyes as far as he could toward Haruka. "H-help?" he pleaded.

Haruka finished off her cigarette as calmly as ever and reached for another. "What are you worried about? No matter what she tries, she can't kill you."

"Tha-that's completely beside the point!" he insisted while Motoko scoffed at the notion that she couldn't kill this heathen male if she really wanted to. "Just because it won't kill me doesn't make it any sort of enjoyable experience! Do you have any idea how stiff my body gets from constantly having to reattach parts of it? Regrowing them is even worse! Not to mention the inconvenience of it all..."

Releasing a smoke-filled sigh, Haruka decided to take pity on the boy. "Put the sword away, Motoko."

"Haruka-san-!"

"Let me finish explaining things, and then you can decide whether or not you want to try killing him." Keitaro shot her a look of betrayal, which she ignored. "But until I finish, everyone needs to stop interrupting and jumping to conclusions or we're never going to get through this, all right?"

Slowly, everyone nodded, Motoko the last of them as she re-sheathed her sword and gave Keitaro one more dirty look, assuring him that he wasn't off the hook yet.

"Now then," she began again. "The magic in the Urashima line traces all the way back to the 1500's. Back then, whatever magic they possessed was simple...some would probably say stupid, in nature. Things like turning apples into oranges and removing set-in stains from rugs and place-mats. Honestly, I think the main reason that our ancestor's kept their magical abilities a secret from everyone else was because of how embarrassed they were of it themselves.

"Things were like that for the better part of a century before our Great-times-ten-Grandfather, Urashima Ushio, stumbled upon a secret ritual granting immortality."

Disbelief appeared on several female faces. "And how exactly does one…go from turning apples to oranges to discovering immortality?" Naru questioned.

"And how does he 'stumble upon' it?" Kitsune added.

Haruka shrugged. "I haven't the faintest. He died long before I ever had the chance to ask him."

Whichever girl wasn't looking disbelieving before was now. "But you JUST SAID he was immortal!"

"'Immortality', was what they always considered it, even though it didn't actually grant the caster eternal life," Haruka interrupted before another tirade could begin. "What it did do was make him virtually unkillable: blades couldn't cut him, bullets couldn't pierce him, fire couldn't burn him, and blunt impacts might have left him winded but without a bruise. Despite all of that, he could still die of natural causes like old age, diseases or starvation. So really, a more proper term for it would have been 'Indestructible'."

The girls looked at Keitaro, who was still looking very uncomfortable at being the center of this discussion. They were all thinking along the same line: Even though he'd survived decapitation and full dismemberment, he certainly didn't have the impenetrable body that Haruka was describing. In fact, Naru and Motoko would go so far as to say that he was much more fragile than any normal person should be; as though he were made of paper or something.

Haruka noticed the questioning stares, but wasn't quite up to that point of the story yet. "Before long, every member of the Urashima family had the Indestructibility ritual performed on them, and were ready to enjoy long, worry-free lives. After all, having almost no fear of a premature death will do wonders for a person's confidence. Of course, for some that confidence led to some horrible decisions that didn't reflect well on the others...

"Unfortunately, after a few generations, a problem came to their attention. It seemed that while the spell may have made them invulnerable, it also made them incredibly unlucky."

"Unlucky how?" Naru asked, having given up on making logic out of the situation and just going with the flow at this point.

"Just your run-of-the-mill bad luck," Haruka replied. "Only multiplied several times over. Continuously failing at crucial moments, always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, bouts of clumsiness so horrible that some of them could literally trip over their own shadows...things like that."

Motoko bowed her head in thought. "So the spell that Ushio discovered was also a curse, then."

"So it would seem. And to make matters worse, the bad fortune seemed to grow worse with each new generation that partook in the ritual. It culminated with our Great-Grandfather Honda. He had joined the Navy and, while out at sea one day, caused an accident that sank not only the ship he was on, but four other ships along with it."

"...How?" Naru demanded incredulously.

Haruka shrugged. "Details were a bit sketchy even back then, but torpedoes, oil tanks and a discarded mop were apparently key factors."

"And he caused the whole thing himself?" Kitsune asked.

"The fact that the very first thing he said when rescue teams found him floating amongst the remains was 'I can explain' certainly indicated as such."

Keitaro turned red and sank deeper into the sofa at hearing the overly familiar line. This, of course, didn't go unnoticed by the others.

"So what does this all mean for him then?" Naru asked, nodding in his direction. "You told us his...condition was an accident."

"I'm almost to that part," she affirmed. "Anyway, after Honda's incident, the rest of the clan decided that Invulnerability just wasn't worth it anymore. The curse was simply too much to handle now that it was becoming a danger to others and not just themselves. They didn't know how to reverse the spell, so they were all stuck with it, but they vowed not to use it on anyone ever again. Hence, Grandma Hina was the first Urashima in several centuries not to have it. And we'd kept it that way for several years now..." She placed a hand on Keitaro's head. "Until this guy came along."

All eyes returned to Keitaro, causing him to sink even further.

"So, what? He heard stories about his ancestors, thought it would be cool to be immortal or whatever, and tried performing the ritual on himself?" Kitsune guessed.

"Not even close," Haruka told her. "No, it was actually his mother's fault."

"His own mother did this to him?" the ash-haired girl ask.

"But why?" Shinobu finally spoke up, wondering what sort of person would do such a thing to their own child.

"Well, it went like this: Even without the Bad Luck Curse, Keitaro was one of the clumsiest, most danger-prone kids I've ever known when he was younger. By the time he was eight years old, he'd already had three broken arms, two broken legs, twelve broken ribs, and a broken hand and foot. And that was just broken bones. I can't even tell you the number of cuts, scrapes, bruises, concussions and other injuries he'd suffered from in that time."

Naru frowned, suddenly hit with a memory of a boy she used to know who was always covered in bandages. …Or had it been a girl?

"Auntie was afraid that Keitaro would end up getting crippled or killed if the accidents kept piling up any further. Of course, she had heard all about the stories of our ancestors and their Indestructibility ritual, so one day she brought Keitaro to the Inn and asked Grandma Hina to perform it on him."

"But what about the bad luck curse?" Shinobu wondered tentatively.

Haruka shrugged. "Her thinking was that his luck was already so dreadful that even if he did end up cursed, it couldn't possibly make it worse than it already was. And even if it did, at least he'd be protected.

"But Hina refused to perform the ritual. Said it had been sealed away for a reason, and that if she did it, it could very well lead to great misfortune for not only Keitaro, but everyone else around him as well. They fought for hours over it, but Hina stood by her word; even though she hated seeing her grandson in pain all the time, she felt she was making the right decision.

"Auntie ended up storming out of the Inn, but returned later that night when everyone was asleep. She found the spell text, took it and Keitaro up to the annex, and started performing the ritual herself. Unfortunately, Grandma woke up, realized what was going on and went to stop it. She ran in just as Auntie was finishing the incantations, which caused her to screw it up, and…" She gestured to Keitaro. "This is the result."

The girls looked at Keitaro, who fidgeted under the stares.

"As you've already seen," Haruka continued. "Rather than receiving a body that can't be damaged by pretty much anything, he received an incredibly fragile body that can be regrown or reattached when necessary."

"I knew it had to be something," Naru muttered. "I knew I couldn't have hit him hard enough to knock his head clean off unless he were made of styrofoam or something." Motoko nodded in agreement, having felt the same way about the result on the male's body from her sword blast.

"Styrofoam is pretty accurate, to be honest," Haruka told them, suddenly feeling weary from having to relive the story of her cousin's plight again. "Hell, punching aside, a person could easily rip his head off with their bare hands if they wanted to."

Keitaro paled considerably. "Haruka, could you please not give them any ide-ah Ah AH! Sto-!" Before he could finish his plea, his head separated from his neck with a disturbing 'Pop'.

"Wow, it really does come right off!" Su exclaimed, sounding downright ecstatic as she held the disembodied head up for everyone to see.

Shinobu immediately passed out again. Kitsune and Naru took on matching looks of nausea and both made a dash for the bathroom, all but tackling each other in an attempt to get there first. Motoko's face turned a light green, but she managed to keep a respectable composure about her. Haruka sighed and reached for another cigarette.

"You are my new favorite thing ever," Su informed the upside-down head in her hands with a jubilant grin, drawing a sharp cringe from it in return.

"Please don't do that anymore," he begged.

"Aw, but this way I could easily get inside your head and tinker around with your brain! Maybe I could implant a few cybernetics. I could make you into a robot-zombie-ninja!"

"Put that thing back, Su," Motoko commanded firmly.

"Awww," the tanned girl whined as she set the head back on the slumped body, which quickly reattached itself. Keitaro sat back up, tilting his head to the sides until his neck cracked twice.

"No matter how many times it happens, you just can't get used to having your head removed," he muttered, causing the listeners to sweatdrop for lack of anything else they could do or say in response.

Haruka and Motoko revived Shinobu as Kitsune and Naru poked their heads back into the room, making sure Keitaro was whole again before returning to their seats.

"Um…i-isn't there any way to…to f-f-fix him?" Shinobu stammered weakly once everyone was settled down again.

Keitaro shrugged helplessly as Haruka shook her head. "None that we know of," she admitted. "Even if there had been a way to reverse the original Immortality ritual, there still wouldn't be any certainty that it could fix a botched version of it."

"I had thought that I'd finally be getting a cure by coming here today," Keitaro mumbled, drawing a few sympathetic frowns from the girls.

"Hey, don't feel so down," Su said as she patted him on the shoulder. "I think you're cool like this."

Keitaro couldn't help the weak smile that appeared at the young girls words. "Well, that makes one of us."

Naru turned her attention back to Haruka. "So then, the reason why Hina-san has hardly been here over the last few years…"

Haruka nodded. "She's been searching the globe for anything that might help turn him back to normal, though there hasn't been much luck with it."

Keitaro frowned. "Aunt Haruka-" She cut him off with a fierce glare. "S-sorry. What was the point of Grandma calling me here if she hasn't found a cure yet? She said she had something important for me, so what else could it be?"

Snuffing out her latest cigarette, she silently walked into the kitchen and returned holding a few sheets of paper. "She called you here for this," she explained, handing the papers over.

With a sudden and strange sense of trepidation, Keitaro began reading the first of the papers. The girls grew a bit worried as his face began to grow pale, his breathing slowed greatly, and his eyes stopped blinking as they focused intently on one specific portion of the letter.

After waiting several seconds with no recovery on his part, Naru frowned and pulled the paper from his unresisting hands and began reading through it herself.

"'Dear Keitaro'," she read aloud, skimming through it as everyone else was just as curious as she. "'Hope this letter finds you well…still searching for anything that might help…mystical properties on Pararakelse Islands…turned out to be another dud…could be gone another year or more…leaving you Hinata House in the meantime…Love Grandma. PS: Kanako says 'I love you''."

A moment of silence befell the group.

"Where are the Pararakelse Islands?" Kitsune wondered, having never heard of them.

"Who's this Kanako that's with her?" Motoko asked. She was sure that Hina had never mentioned her before.

"She'll be gone for another year?" Shinobu said a bit sadly, having never gotten the opportunity to meet the old lady yet.

"Are duds good to eat?" That was Su.

Another bout of silence, and Haruka wisely stuck her fingers in her ears.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, LEAVING HIM HINATA HOUSE!" all five girls shouted together.

xxx

xxx

And that's that, for now. Not really sure where I'm going to take this story from here, but inspiration will hit me eventually.

Until then.

LL


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